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Park 51 and RLUIPA, Or, Conservatives Hoisted On Their Petard

By Daniel Schultz

…nd Institutionalized Persons Act, arguing that it “protects religious land uses from discrimination.” Thus because of Republican legislation, conservative opponents of the Park 51 project have had to fight not on legal grounds, but on the far weaker notion that the community center’s organizers should build elsewhere out of respect for the Ground Zero site. That, it should be said, is hardly a compelling argument.** Or as Melissa Rogers puts it on…

How to Slow Down the Rush to War: What Obama Should Do About Syria

By Aryeh Cohen

…t crisis in Syria, in which the U.N. is blocked from acting decisively because Russia and China will use their vetoes against any action that imperils Assad, President Obama should call a conclave of the world’s other countries, all of them, and let them together decide on what should be done with regard to saving the people of Syria from its rogue regime. The specific use of chemical weapons should be referred to the World Court for possible tria…

Two Wars and No Peace in Sight: The Role of Faith-Based Pacifism

By Richard Ricketts

…e is structural violence. Certainly, there is physical violence such as spouse or child abuse. But structural forms of violence systematically affect whole groups of people. This type of violence occurs when structures—such as an authoritarian regime, a patriarchal system, or racial segregation laws—limit a group’s opportunities and life chances. Such structures do violence to people by systematically oppressing them, by treating them in a degradi…

Anti-Choice Activists to Use Planned Parenthood Vote as Campaign Issue

By Sarah Posner

…ecades,” a false statement that even got it embroiled in litigation, and caused a group of Cincinnati-area nuns to call on it “to stop making the false claim that Congressman Steve Driehaus (OH-01) voted to expand federal funding of abortion.” Similarly, Charmaine Yoest of AUL falsely called the final health care law “the biggest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade.” Driehaus lost, as did about half of the House Democratic pro-life caucus, alt…

God in the Inauguration: JFK, Bush, and Obama

By Jerome E. Copulsky

…rward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages; when soldiers died in wave upo…

That Mercenary Feeling: What the Apparently Unlimited Use of “Contractors” Says About American Empire in Afghanistan and Iraq

By Peter Laarman

…nley McChrystal, acknowledged recently that we are losing ground there because (surprise) ordinary Afghans appear to resent our casual killing in their country. In view of this you might think Gen. McChrystal would be worried about the impact of so many mercenaries; if he his, he is doing nothing to change it. But here is the part of Glanz’s piece I particularly like. He quotes Frederick Barton of the Center for Strategic and International Studies…

From Engravings to Ultrasounds: The Politics of Imaging the Womb

By Elizabeth Yale

…In comparison, Hunter betrayed no interest in the gender of the children housed in the uteruses he anatomized. Access to living images of the fetus facilitates our own obsession with gendering babies, even before their birth. But imaging technology also introduces difficult questions. Twenty-five states have passed laws regulating the use of ultrasound imaging when a woman seeks an abortion. In Louisiana, Texas, and Wisconsin, the law requires an…

Mark McGwire Confesses, He Sinned on Baseball’s Sacred Ground

By Michael J. Altman

…better and worse ways to confess. Rodriguez, a Major League player also accused of steroid use, confessed at the beginning of the season with plenty of baseball left for him to redeem himself. The NFL’s Vick didn’t confess to dog fighting until he was caught and it cost him. His recent success on the field is only the beginning of his long road back into the moral good graces of American sports fans. Kobe Bryant and Tiger Woods have both confessed…

Must James Foley and Steven Sotloff Be Martyrs to Not Have Died in Vain?

By Alana Massey

…understanding the political significance of these executions, though RNS’ use of the word “martyr” in the title still imbues their deaths with an ideological significance and intentionality that has the potential to elevate the message of ISIS by posturing over and against it. The propaganda of ISIS is heavy with references to martyrdom. For their opponents to use such language is, arguably, to capitulate to their terms. The reality is that the b…

In Praise of Failure: Is Defining Religion Such a Good Idea?

By Ivan Strenski

…a bit and think about language, since we are at least talking about how we use, or should use, words. Fully to appreciate what I am saying, know that here in Riverside County, California, I am writing close in time and space to the shootings in San Bernardino. I have been driven to distraction and anger by the way the word “terrorism” is kicked about. For example: mass shootings by a white Christian, “crazy, unexplainable,” but, mass shootings by…